early mornings....

This is a photo of the sun rising over the hill in front of our house this morning. It was way more impressive in real life- the sun was like this huge ball of fire flaming above the trees. Xander came to the front door and said, "moon?????" (I can't describe his inflection in type) and then he had a hard time understanding that it was the sun..he kept calling it the moon! We've been having a lot of very early mornings around here lately. Both kids have been waking up around 4:30 every morning. The time shift did have something to do with it but doesn't really explain it all b/c before "falling back" the boys were finally sleeping till about 7am every morning- what bliss! to have those days back.... James will often go back to sleep if I nurse him but Xander not so much...I have resorted to the dreaded TV to get a little extra sleep. It hasn't helped that the last few days I have had a sinus infection and laryngitis.



Finally I sound worse than I actually feel. It's hard to be on the ball when I can't even get off the couch! I've been pondering illness recently- I just feel like I have been sick a lot this fall, more so than usual. I got both the flu shot and the pneumonia shot in September and then promptly got really sick.... I don't actually believe that the shots cause illness but I to wonder if both shots together followed by being sick was just a big hit to my immune system. Anyway so in my ponderings of illness I have been trying to work on healthier lifestyle choices- pretty much a never ending ongoing work in progress. But today's manifestation led to a renewed effort in menu planning. Of course as per usual I did really well for a week and then got sick/life interfered and things didn't go quite as well as planned but luckily we had leftovers (and Kulick's daily dinner special...). So I have been trying to use the crockpot for the days that I work so that we all have something to eat and then cook dinner on the days that I am home and have Frank cook dinner on the days that he is home but I am working. For the most part it has been going well-although I don't actually have anything planned for tomorrow yet... I should work on that! On that note if anyone has yummy kid-friendly, nutritious, healthy crockpot recipes they would like to share (not asking much am I...) I am always up for trying something new!



So I haven't written much recently b/c I honestly haven't had too much to say. We've just been living our lives these days- working, sleeping (or not sleeping much as the case may be), playing, eating, cleaning, etc. It amazes me how much mess 2 little boys can make in such a short amount of time- I think I need to just chase them with a garbage bag pretty much at all times. James is just about as mobile as Xander these days...and Xander has perfected climbing into whole new art form so we've been spending a lot of time cleaning up after them these days. Last week somehow they got a hold of a 16oz bottle of baby lotion and while Frank was sleeping in the room with them managed to squirt the entire bottle all over the room- carpet and all! Luckily baby lotion wipes up pretty easily with cleaning rags and we have stainmaster carpet that is variegated (bought on purpose to hide the inevitable messes) but then I had to shampoo the carpet. Frank has been installing new doorknobs- ones that actually lock- to keep Xander out of every room in the house. His learning to open doorknobs was not a good day in my life! Next on my list is some bifold door locks and getting the dead bolt on the front door fixed- luckily now that the weather has gotten cooler Xander actually asks for his coat before heading outside without telling me. Thank goodness we live somewhere we he can go outside and play without me supervising his every move. I thought I was done baby proofing- nobody warned me about toddle proofing. BTW- don't let this sweet little face fool you....